Secession a Viable Option for Texas

Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM) members say that while the legal processes of nullification and constitutional restoration have been carefully considered for redressing their grievances about widespread federal power abuses, they believe that secession from the ailing union—toward a new Texas nation—is the key to restoring Texan freedom.

In this first-ever coverage of a TNM gathering on Sept. 10, AMERICAN FREE PRESS learned that they seek significant headway toward Texas nationhood via education and dedicated activism.

Secession—which has been batted around in varying degrees over the years in states as diverse as Vermont, Alaska, Hawaii and others—is being explored along a different trajectory in a California proposal [see AFP No. 37, Sept. 12, 2011] for 13 or more counties to form a 51st state, to be called South California, but which will remain within the United States.

However, the TNM, citing their state’s almost autonomous electrical grid, and unique history and culture, feels Texas is an ideal candidate for outright nationhood.

Notably, another group—called the Republic of Texas—claims that since Texas was its own nation after the Mexican War, the United States did not have the authority to annex it into the union. TNM member Dave Mundy disagrees, saying that the people of Texas voted for annexation into the U.S. Moreover, while Article 1 of the Texas constitution does establish that “the people are sovereign,” and that they have the right to alter or abolish their state government, neither the Texas nor the U.S. constitutions directly address secession from the union.

The Texas Constitution’s Article 1, section 1, as Mundy noted, says the state’s independence is subject to the U.S. Constitution:

“Texas is a free and independent state, subject only to the Constitution of the United States, and the maintenance of our free institutions and the perpetuity of the union depend upon the preservation of the right of local self-government, unimpaired to all the states.”

Section 2 of Article 1 says, in part:

“All political power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority. . . . The faith of the people of Texas stands pledged to the preservation of a republican form of government, and, subject to this limitation only, they have at all times the inalienable right to alter, reform or abolish their [state] government in such manner as they may think expedient.”

TNM members told AFP they are mindful of the need to clean up their state government, while working toward independence. A major question they ponder is whether the central government would use force to prevent Texas secession.

The TNM met at the Crockett Hotel, directly behind the Alamo, during the 175th anniversary of the decisive battle there that birthed the independent nation of Texas that lasted nine years, until 1845. TNM speakers said the federal union that Texas eventually joined has become an intolerable tyrant.

“It’s clean . . . it’s peaceful . . . it’s passionate as hell,” TNM meeting moderator Cary Wise, a former police officer, declared about the TNM. He said local and state government officials need to be aware of the TNM’s outlook and should be encouraged to cooperate.

It’s the agents of federal domination and their central banking supervisors (having trampled states’ rights established in the 10th Amendment to the Constitution) who are the real revolutionaries—the ones who actually divorced the original constitutional order and seceded from the pursuit of liberty for all. “We are the counterrevolutionaries,” Wise stated. “We counter the revolutionaries who see the [federal] state as the supreme being.”

TNM speaker Robert Smith noted that concerned Texas citizens—and those from other states who want to help—need to consider what kind of future awaits them under the current United States union, with its endless wars, mountainous debt, record joblessness and other extreme ills. “Let’s get Texas independent and show the rest of the nation what liberty is—what limited government is,” Smith said.

Restoration, Smith argued, involves the laborious task of rebuilding and reviving damaged freedoms. And nullification, he continued, also would be tedious, since countless disagreeable federal laws, executive orders and court rulings would have to be challenged. “We could not even get it done with the TSA bill,” he remarked, pointing out that the recent Texas bill to forbid Transportation Security Administration personnel from groping airline passengers boarding flights in Texas was knocked down by the U.S. Department of Justice—and Texas regrettably backed down.

Interestingly, a former Soviet citizen, Sergei Smet, attended the gathering, saying that when he first heard President Barack Obama speak, he felt like he was back in the old Soviet Union. Now a Texas resident and TNM member, he said, “He [Obama] was chosen carefully for this office—like Bush, like Clinton, like everybody else.” As he sees it, martial law is just around the corner, and social unrest will be exploited to justify a crackdown on the populace. So it’s time to act, he said

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